Daydreamer
by Zayz
Summary: Jess/Nick. He was always a daydreamer, never a doer. Nick's life story in a series of snapshots.


A/N: I have developed a slightly unhealthy obsession with New Girl and Jess/Nick. Like, it's actually kind of a problem. The show is so good.

This story is Nick's life story from elementary school to the age of thirty-six. I would've done his whole life story, but this thing was getting long and out of hand as it was, so I stopped at thirty-six.

WARNING: I'm taking some liberties with timelines and details here. Some stuff, I think I remember from the show; other stuff, I simply invented. So if I'm off somewhere, you don't have to tell me, you just have to forgive me.

It's been quite a while since I've written anything, so I'm a bit rusty. And I've never done New Girl before. And this is very long, and a bit rough around the edges. But…I hope you like it. Cheers!

* * *

**Daydreamer  
By: Zayz**

_Daydreamer  
With eyes that make you melt  
He lends his coat for shelter  
Plus he's there for you  
When he shouldn't be  
But he stays all the same  
Waits for you  
Then sees you through_

_You can find him sitting on your doorstep  
Waiting for a surprise  
And he will feel like he's been there for hours  
And you can tell that he'll be there for life_

-Adele, "Daydreamer"

* * *

On his second grade report card, his teacher once sent him home with straight C-pluses and a note saying, "Nick Miller is a polite, intelligent boy who would do very well in the classroom if he remembered to turn in his homework and stopped staring out the window all the time."

Nick never really understood what the teacher meant by her 'staring out the window' comment. He'd just been bored by the geography and spelling and arithmetic, and had been trying to catch the eye of the little blonde girl with pigtails and the Barbie lunch box who sat by the window and had a sixty-four pack of crayons. Everyday in class, he tried to work up the guts to ask her if he could borrow some of her crayons during free time, but all year, he never did. He was always too shy.

xXx

In middle school, the language arts teacher assigned them a career project, to get the students to think about what they wanted to do later in life. While his friends prepared presentations on doctors, lawyers, bankers and teachers, Nick waited until the day before the project was due to start, because he had no clue what he wanted to be. Sure, astronauts and authors and firefighters were cool, yet somehow, he was never convinced, never sure. He could never see himself doing much of anything, really.

When his turn came to present, Nick announced that he wanted to be a philosopher, because he wanted to sit around all day and think about things and get paid for it. And it had a really cool name.

The class laughed at him. The teacher thought he was kidding and gave him a D.

xXx

Where Schmidt knew exactly what his plans were and studied diligently through college to get to law school, Nick only decided to go in the beginning of his junior year. Majoring in business, as urged by his freshman career counselor, he took a crash course in LSATs and, to his utter astonishment, somehow managed to get the same score as Schmidt.

Schmidt took this as proof that the universe wasn't fair. Nick was just pleased that he had an intelligent-sounding answer to give now, when people asked about his future plans. And it finally gave his parents something to brag about; they were so excited that their son was getting ahead in life at last that they offered to pay half his tuition. It was one of the few times Nick Miller was actually speechless.

Schmidt and Nick decided to get an apartment together near law school, the summer after graduation, with their friend Winston, who was looking for a place to crash until he worked out the details of his contract in Latvia. They got the loft cheap because it wasn't in the best condition when they moved in, but it was close to campus and for the most part, it worked out well enough. Winston stayed awhile, then left, and Coach moved in because Schmidt was so overwhelmingly grateful to the man who helped him obtain his most prized possession, his six-pack abs.

Law school was tough, made even tougher by his crappy job as a waiter in a nearby restaurant to pay some of the bills, but it was a period of calm and contentment for Nick. He was going to be a lawyer. It seemed like things were finally falling into place.

xXx

Halfway through his first year in law school, Nick met Lisa. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, but she kicked his ass in a mock trial. It was after that trial that she asked him out. They went out for drinks and after only a few hours with her, he was hopelessly besotted with her.

She was blunt, sarcastic, and razor-sharp, never taking any of his bullshit – and, strangely, that's what he loved most about her. They spent many long nights in the library, even studying occasionally, and he knew he felt happier with her than he had with anyone in a long time. He had hooked up a few times in college, dated only sporadically for very brief amounts of time, but nothing more than that; but this thing with Lisa felt right. Even with his commitment phobia, he spent more time with her than he would have dreamed he would spend with anyone. They took walks at four in the morning on their way back to their respective apartments, just talking about everything.

By second year, they were getting serious. Schmidt pointed out that Lisa spent so much time in their apartment that she and Nick should move in together. The remark was harmless, off-hand, half-joking, but Nick thought about it for a long time afterward. Moving in with someone sounded terrifyingly intimate, yet his relationship with Lisa was going strong and she did spend all her time in their apartment and it made sense, moving in with his girlfriend. It was a very mature, adult thing to do.

So he asked Lisa one night when they were on one of their four AM walks, if she wanted to get an apartment with him. Lisa blanched, and started chewing on her fingernails. She was really quiet for a few moments. Then she broke up with him on the spot. She said she wasn't ready for that kind of relationship yet. And then she fled.

He stood there, blinking stupidly in the dark, wondering what just happened. He wanted to run after her, tell her he wasn't ready yet either but he wanted to try it, because it was her and because he cared about her. He wanted to tell her that he was willing to go slow with her if that's what she wanted.

But she took great pains to never see him again afterwards. She left him in the lurch the moment he wanted to grow up. And that was when the madness began.

xXx

The ill-fated band. The cock-fight. The drunken nights and hung-over mornings. The guilt and regret and desperation. It ate him up over the coming months, and culminated in him deciding he was tired of depending on people and having their decisions affect his. He dropped out of law school with three semesters to go, much to the horror of everyone who knew him, because he was so horribly depressed and disillusioned and tired of people, tired of competing, tired of trying to schmooze and impress. He got the bartending job the same day, partly because they offered the best salary and partly because he got a lot of discounted alcohol.

Nick wanted to move out of the apartment because it reminded him too much of Lisa, but he was broke and had nowhere to go. Schmidt finished up law school and the two of them, along with Coach, spent the summer redecorating creatively on their tight budget.

The hard work kept him afloat, but he still got drunk many nights and walked around like a chicken caught in a rainstorm, his shoulders curled inward and his eyes tired and bleak. Once again, he had no idea what to do with his life. For all his want of independence, he had no money and he was working for a harried, scatterbrained bar manager with no benefits, no prospects.

Coach and Schmidt did what they could. Coach offered to put Nick on a fitness plan; Schmidt offered to be his wing-man and go girl-hunting. But Nick couldn't do it. Just couldn't.

xXx

He met Caroline a couple of years after the law school disaster. He was quite drunk at a karaoke bar one weekend with Schmidt and Coach. Nick finished a spirited impression of "Eye of the Tiger," forgetting half the words and slurring the rest. Then he passed out and hit his head hard on the way down. Caroline was a graduate student in the school for pharmacy nearby, and had been sitting behind him when he fell. She called a few doctor friends over to make sure he didn't have a concussion.

He didn't have a concussion, but he asked her out on a whim anyway. She was the first girl he had asked out since Lisa. Caroline was pretty and cared enough to help out a random stranger – and anyway, he was too drunk to convince himself it was a bad idea. But he was astonished when she blushed and said yes.

She admitted later that she had been eyeing him all evening and had wanted to ask him out anyway. He decided that their coming together was destiny.

She seemed like the answer to his post-Lisa agony. He was as happy with her as he'd been with Lisa, except happier, because Caroline was low-key and low-maintenance and she wanted to commit too, though she wasn't quite ready to get married.

She was perfect. Six months into their relationship, he was convinced that she was The One. But he knew better than to ask her to move in with him. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

xXx

Four years. They were happy for four years. Weathering all the usual storms relationships bring, making memories, sharing good news, arguing sometimes, spending as much time as possible together. Over the course of four years, she gave him some of his faith back. She made him smile and endured his quirks, even told him that she loved them.

Four years into their relationship, he still thought she was The One. He would have married her, maybe even had children with her, if she let him. He thought he was genuinely in love with her.

Apparently, she didn't agree.

xXx

Devastated was an understatement.

Caroline didn't devastate Nick. She obliterated him.

She was supposed to be The One, the love of his life, but she still left him. He had no faith in anything or anyone anymore. He couldn't afford to.

Fool him once, shame on her. Fool him twice, shame on him. There wasn't going to be a third time.

xXx

Getting over Caroline proved to be a near impossibility, but as with anything, life marched on mercilessly.

Schmidt was still Schmidt, sleeping around and strutting around the apartment like a peacock. Coach moved out and Winston moved back in. Nick spent less time drunk or crying, and more time trying to be responsible, trying to move on but never knowing what that meant.

And then came Jessica Day.

xXx

Jess meandered into Nick's life the way she meandered into a lot of things – almost accidentally, with a wide-eyed innocence that seemed to defy the nearly thirty years she has spent on Earth.

She walked into the loft that otherwise-innocuous afternoon in a brightly colored dress and trendy glasses, won Schmidt over with her talk of model friends – and all of a sudden, there she was, walking into the kitchen every morning with her hair all disheveled and her clothes rumpled and her big blue eyes so pure and sleepy.

For a long time, Nick couldn't explain how that happened. How she, a perfect stranger, effortlessly won them all over and somehow became a part of their lives. How her toothbrush joined the others in the bathroom, how the sounds of her singing became a part of his morning rhythm. How within the first week of them meeting her, she got them to skip the party of the year and comfort her over a date gone wrong.

Maybe meeting her was fate. Maybe it was just dumb luck. Either way, he was glad it happened.

xXx

He still missed Caroline like she was a part of his anatomy forcibly amputated, like someone was constantly bashing his ribs in with a baseball bat, that day at the wedding. He was drawn to her like the moth to the flame that consumed it whole. She inspired in him the most painful kind of happiness imaginable. But he clung to it, despite Jess and Winston and Schmidt bobbing around him and trying to make him stop, because being with Caroline was so much less painful in the short term than being without her.

And then she had thrown that bomb at him, about having a boyfriend. It was like she had broken up with him all over again, because she had snatched away the last of his desperate hope. The hope she had instilled in him to begin with, when he fell in love with her and she made him think maybe, just maybe, he might have found the girl who loved him back enough to build a life with him.

The night of the wedding was the first night he grew to like Jess in earnest. She was right; he had to let Caroline go. It was different hearing it from her than hearing it from his roommates, and through his drunken haze, he finally understood.

He still felt empty inside, as though Caroline had robbed his insides of any warmth or happiness, but at least when he looked up and outside of himself, he had his roommates to gently start filling the void with their warmth and craziness. As they danced the chicken dance in the middle of a slow song, Nick realized that Schmidt and Winston and Jess were unabashedly themselves, for better or worse, and would, in their clumsy way, take care of him, if only he let them.

xXx

Nick really thought he was ready to date again, when he met Julia. In a way, she was a hybrid of Lisa and Caroline, sweet and fragile like Caroline but headstrong and no-nonsense like Lisa. Maybe Julia wasn't The One, as Caroline had been, but she made him feel warm and cool and attractive. She made him smile. She got along with his roommates – even Jess, after a rocky start. Nick felt good about Julia. He was sure he was a better boyfriend to Julia than he had been to Caroline; he felt as though maybe he had actually learned how to be patient, loving and helpful.

Until she sent him that cactus and he overreacted and then she dumped him. Dumped him and left him exactly where he started.

In the requisite drunken haze that followed, frustration overwhelmed him. He felt like a fly with perpetual amnesia, blindly bumping into a glass door over and over and over again, learning nothing and receiving nothing but a wicked headache.

Would he ever learn? He just wasn't meant to do healthy adult things like have a career or get married. He wasn't good at being an adult.

When he really thought about it, the only thing he was good at was not doing anything right. And there was no job market – or girlfriend market – for someone like that.

xXx

The morning of the ultrasound, he woke up on the beach at dawn curled up against a sleeping Jess, with little idea what had happened the night before. He had a few half-memories of Schmidt rapping his name, of a freezing cold ocean against his bare legs, of Jess blinking her enormous blue eyes at him like a hurt puppy. What was it that he'd said? He lay there on the wet, gritty sand beneath his still-aching back, watching the sunrise and trying to remember, but nothing came.

All he could remember with certainty was that he might have cancer. That part had happened before he got drunk. And now he had that appointment with Jess's weird OB-GYN friend. The thought made his guts constrict into a giant organ meatball in his abdomen. He remembered that picture the roommates had shown him, of the thyroid cancer diagnosis with the skull and cross-bones. Somehow, he didn't feel old enough to die of cancer.

He considered lying here all morning, staring at the sky and listening to the birds, "forgetting" about the appointment when they all woke up too late. But he knew he shouldn't.

He had to know if he had cancer. So when the sun rose high enough, he shook Jess awake and off they went.

xXx

Finding out he didn't have cancer was an enormous relief. Nick was touched that Winston, Schmidt, Jess and Cece all dutifully stuck around to find out with him, and also split the ultrasound bill. Nick was even touched that Schmidt was willing to share his precious wallet chains. It made him feel warm and fuzzy and content inside, as they walked outside in the dizzying sunlight, looking rumpled and exhausted in yesterday's clothes.

Off-hand, he asked Jess if anything happened last night, because he needed to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. She said no and gave him a fragile sort of smile that made him suspicious.

So later that night when he went to bed, he fought hard to remember exactly what happened the previous night. He didn't sleep for hours. Then, at around two in the morning, his brain rewarded him at last with a fuzzy ten-second mental film clip, in which he informed Jess that she didn't know how to be real and then she countered a little while later by telling him that he didn't do anything with his life.

God, he really didn't do anything with his life, did he? He was a broke, neurotic, cranky, chronically single thirty-year-old man who still lived with roommates and wasn't capable of a serious long-term relationship. He didn't have health insurance. He didn't even have a real wallet.

Something needed to change.

xXx

He first had the idea of going back to law school and finishing his degree during a particularly cold shower one morning. After complaining liberally (and loudly) about the state of the apartment building, Nick did a bit of discreet Google searching, taking great care to erase the browser history in case any of the roommates found out.

It was a doable option. He would have to take out a few loans, and get back in the habit of reading books and actually remembering the content, and he would definitely have to figure out a way to get used to the snotty twentysomethings all desperate for blood and status that led to him quitting in the first place – but it was doable. He had been good at law school the first time, just uninterested in the politics. But now he had seen Schmidt go through it and find a comfortable job, and now Nick kind of wanted that too. The stability, the prestige, the paycheck. The purpose and direction that Schmidt seemed to effuse whenever he talked about work. Maybe playing politics was a reasonable price to pay to get all that. It was certainly better than what he was doing right now.

He mulled it over for many weeks, did lots more Google searching. But one night, he wasn't careful enough and Jess managed to stumble across some of his searches. And, being Jess, she wasn't too concerned about privacy or subtlety. She just walked right into the living room where Nick, Schmidt and Winston were watching a basketball game and asked, "Hey, Nick, are you going to go back to law school?"

All three men whipped around to stare at Jess; then Schmidt and Winston whipped around again to stare at Nick, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Nick went brilliantly red.

"Uh, no, of course not, Jess, where did you get that idea?" he muttered.

"I saw a whole bunch of websites in the history," she said. "I was trying to find this page about how to knit these really cute patterns onto socks, which I'd found a few weeks ago but couldn't find again, so I went through the website history to find this page, and I saw a bunch of these sites about law schools and tips on how to go back to school. So I was wondering if you were thinking about going to law school. Are you?"

"Jess, that's totally inappropriate," said Nick. "I mean, who does that? Goes through people's search histories and then _tells_ them about it?"

"Internet search histories are public knowledge," insisted Jess. "And anyway, it's a simple question. Are you or aren't you going back?"

Schmidt and Winston's eyes were like lasers on the back of his neck. Nick hesitated.

"Maybe. I don't know. I was thinking about it."

"Well, I think it's great, man," said Schmidt, clapping Nick on the back. "Really great idea. We could be lawyer twins!"

Nick snorted. "Yeah. Because that's what I want out of life."

"Hey, if law school is what you want, I say, go for it," said Winston. "I mean, you were almost a lawyer once. Maybe you can be a lawyer for real this time."

"Yeah, it's a really good idea, Nick," said Jess, grinning. "You should go back."

"I haven't decided anything yet," said Nick, still red in the ears. "I'll let you know."

But as the conversation slowly drifted back to the game on TV, Nick knew in his heart of hearts that whatever else he said, he would probably end up going.

xXx

When Nick got accepted to go back to the law school he had once dropped out of for the coming fall, Schmidt threw a party, for which Winston attempted to bake a cake. But Jess saved her gift for the day after the party, when Nick was woozy and hung-over and generally at his most vulnerable: she decided to take him shopping for new "lawyer clothes." And she became mysteriously deaf to all of his groans and complaints; she simply dragged him to the car and drove him to the mall.

"I can't afford any of this," he grumbled as she pulled him into a department store.

"I know," said Jess, "which is why it's on me. As a congratulations-on-getting-into-law-school present."

"That's real nice of you, Jess, but I don't need a present."

Her smile was bright and honey-sweet. "Well, that's just too bad, since you're getting one anyway," she sang as she shoved him towards a rack of black trousers. "I mean, what are you going to wear in school, Nick? This?"

"What's wrong with _this_?" Nick glanced at himself in a nearby full-length mirror.

"Jeans with a hole in the knee, with a plaid shirt that looks like you've kept it since high school, does not say 'lawyer,' Nick," said Jess. "I would know. Cece has tried to date a few. Plus, Schmidt is a lawyer and he _never_ wears stuff like this."

"That's because Schmidt is a girly snob."

"Well, then he's a very successful girly snob, and you should follow his example. You're going to be a lawyer now too!"

"I'm beginning to regret that decision."

"No, you don't." She shoved several hangers of trousers and dress shirts into his arms without hesitation. "Now go try these on."

"Are these even my size?"

"We'll find out."

They spent the next couple of hours like that, with Jess shoving clothes into his hands and demanding that Nick "model" all of them, despite Nick's complaints that "modeling" wasn't manly. But he did it anyway, because she insisted, and she kept laughing because it was so weird to see Nick try to take himself seriously, and he kept laughing because her laugh was infectious and it really was kind of funny, watching himself try to take himself seriously. It had been such a long time since he had attempted to look nice that it was actually comical, doing it now.

Schmidt kept texting them and attempting to video chat to find their location so he could help give Nick fashion advice. Schmidt was mortally offended that his best friend had not entrusted him with this kind of task.

But hanging around under the glare of the department store lights, working up a sweat as he changed in and out of clothes that did not seem to belong to him, laughing and complaining and making a variety of disgusted, confused, and frustrated faces, Nick realized that really, he wouldn't want to be here with anyone but Jess, who laughed and complained and made a million faces right along with him.

And no, it wasn't even because his only other option would have been Schmidt.

xXx

Going back to law school was damn hard. There was a lot more reading and schmoozing than he had remembered. It was torture the first few weeks, merely evil the next few. He'd had to cut back hours at the bar to actually have a shot at finishing his work, which had been frustrating because he could have used the extra money. But he had done it once and he was doing it again, sitting around at the kitchen table deep into the early hours of the morning everyday, surrounded by a mountain of books and papers and empty coffee mugs.

Winston, Schmidt and Jess teased and joked and attempted with little success to prepare Nick for his exams, but they were genuinely impressed that he had followed through on this one. It was still weird, seeing him in the clothes he and Jess had bought that afternoon at the mall, smelling like cologne and keeping his hair neat, but it was a good kind of weird.

At long last, Nick was finally beginning to resemble an adult.

xXx

After class one afternoon, a twenty-five year old law student named Hannah surprised Nick by approaching him shyly and asking if he wanted to get coffee with her some time. He was so startled, he didn't even respond for a few seconds, just stared at her and wondered why his brain had gone blank.

She seemed nice – she spoke up often in class, usually with the right answer – and she was definitely pretty, slender with long blonde curls. She took his confusion in stride, waiting patiently for him to respond.

The truth was, since Julia, Nick hadn't tried to date again. He'd turned down a few offers after their break-up, but for the most part, women left him alone and he was grateful for it. He wasn't sure he could go through the agony of a relationship again, at least not now.

But she was still standing there, waiting. Her eyes were a lovely shade of hazel – olive oil green with flecks of brown. She looked unsure now, as he considered her.

It was just coffee with a sweet, pretty law student, but ultimately, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He turned her down. He had so much to do tonight that he didn't even want to fathom it, and anyway, he wasn't ready yet.

Hannah was nice about it. She said, "Oh, okay. Maybe another time." And she looked like she meant it. She smiled, then turned around and walked away, leaving him rooted to the spot, scratching his head and wondering why he was such an ass sometimes.

xXx

When he came home from class that night, Winston was out with Shelby and Schmidt was at a work thing and Jess was alone, bustling around the apartment, singing as usual. Her hair was in rollers and she was wearing a pink bathrobe with ducks on it. She beamed as Nick entered the room.

"Hey, Nick, how was class?" she asked, bouncing forward and giving him a hug.

"Fine." He accepted her hug. "What are you up to?"

"Getting ready. I've got a date!" She twirled towards the kitchen counter, a roller coming loose and catching in her curls.

"A date?"

"Yup!" She grinned. "Got asked out at the grocery store today. It was kind of cliché, but whatever, I said yes!"

She started humming again, and went to search the fridge for a snack. Nick sat down at the kitchen table, watching her dance around the kitchen, somehow befuddled. The image of Hannah asking him out for coffee flashed suddenly in his mind's eye.

Jess got into the la-la-la chorus of her song, and Nick felt compelled to ask her, with genuine curiosity, "How do you do it, Jess?"

"Do what?"

"_That_." He gestured at her. "The singing. The dancing. The optimism. Saying yes to dates with strangers even though you have every reason in the world not to."

She studied him for a few seconds, wondering how to respond. Instinct told her to make a joke, laugh and tell him it was because she was a happy person and he was like a grumpy old man, but something in the set of his mouth, the flatness in his eyes stopped her. He was in a rare mood, asking her this serious question, and she didn't want to let him down. They didn't have moments like this very often.

So she sighed, sat up on the counter with her heels bouncing against the drawers, and said, "Well, I don't know…I mean, I know Spencer cheated on me, and that's supposed to make me scared and bitter and stop trusting men or whatever, but I'm really not that afraid of being hurt again."

"Seriously?" He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Seriously," she said. "It sucked, but it's not the worst thing in the world."

"What could possibly be worse than being hurt and betrayed?"

She chewed on her lip, her enormous blue eyes like pale gemstones, shiny and a little bit vulnerable. The lights in the kitchen cast a golden glow across her face, bringing out the contours of her laugh lines, the shadows around her features.

"I think the worst thing would be to end up alone," she said. "So…you have to keep trying. You have to keep saying yes."

He mulled that one over for a while in silence, his eyes faraway, lost in thought. It didn't seem right to get up and remove her rollers, break the solemnity of their moment, so she stayed where she was and shared the silence with him. He looked so serious, with his brows knitted together, his jaw set and determined. The elementary school teacher in her wanted to approach him, give him a hug, hand him the feeling stick and a sheet of sparkly stickers. But the adult in her knew that he was kind of like a wild rabbit; coming close would scare him away, but staying still would make him come, when he was ready.

Her patience was presently rewarded when he told her, "I don't know if I could ever really say yes again, Jess."

"I think you can," she said. "Maybe not now…but when the right person comes along, I think you'll be able to say yes."

Something in his expression seemed to soften. "Is there even a right person?"

She shrugged. "Some people think so. Some people don't. I prefer to think so. It's a lot less depressing that way."

This makes him chuckle wryly. "Jess, just because something is depressing, doesn't make it any less possible."

"True," she said, "but if there's evidence for both sides, then I prefer to take the less-depressing option. You've got to realize that the glass is half full, Nick, not half empty."

He still looked troubled, so she hopped off the counter and approach him at the table. Her shadow on the floor made her look like an alien. She clapped her hand on his shoulder and squeezed tight. She smelled like cinnamon and warm laundry. She smiled at him, and then sauntered off to her bedroom to remove her rollers, leaving him alone with his thoughts at the kitchen table, his shoulder feeling slightly cold and empty now that the weight of her hand was gone.

xXx

Like when she first came into his life and somehow managed to evade his usual emotional security systems and become his friend, Nick couldn't quite explain how the way he looked at Jess changed over the next few months.

It started subtle, noticing physical things like how she looked the prettiest when her hair was a wild mess framing her porcelain-doll face; how she was actually kind of tiny and fit snugly against his body when they hugged; how she smelled the best in the morning before she showered because she smelled the most like herself, warm and indescribably sweet; how the bright colors she wore contrasted with her pale blue eyes.

And then it progressed to the less-subtle, more intangible things about her, like how her laugh made the tiny hairs at the back of his neck stand up a little straighter; how her entrance into a room made him smile a little bigger; how he preferred to sit next to her rather than Schmidt or Winston when the roommates settled onto the couches to watch TV in the evenings.

She was his friend, and when she wasn't confusing him or driving him nuts, they got along comfortably, more or less harmoniously. But it began to take on layers and intricate shades as time went on, as he relaxed around her and she allowed her more serious side to show.

Many nights, Nick was swamped with homework and stayed awake until two, three, four in the morning working. And on these nights, Jess developed this habit of wandering into the kitchen around midnight, making herself a cup of coffee, and staying up with him. This usually made her blunder around like a zombie the next day, but they had some of their best conversations in those ambiguous hours, when it was too early to be morning, too late to be night. Sometimes she helped him study; otherwise, she just talked as he read, telling him jokes, stories, some of the weird dreams she'd had. They usually stayed up late enough to watch the sunrise together. It became their thing, their special little secret.

During the day, they were the same as they ever were – he was cranky, she was quirky – but the night was theirs to be whoever else they chose, whoever else felt right at the time.

xXx

On a cold winter night in his second year of law school, when Nick scored highly on a difficult exam after a straight week of studying, Jess broke out the wine and Nick ditched the homework and the two of them got blissfully tipsy together, the world blurred pleasantly around the edges.

That was the night Jess whisper-sang an Elvis song completely off-key and grabbed Nick's hand and danced around the kitchen table with him. That was the night Nick picked Jess up and attempting the move from the end of _Dirty Dancing_, but did something to his back and dropped her and landed in a heap on the floor with her, giggling madly.

That was the night when Jess told Nick a funny story, and he laughed until he cried, and Jess half-jokingly told Nick that she loved him, and Nick half-jokingly kissed her on the mouth, and they lingered there for several seconds, and everything changed.

Jess was the one to break the kiss first, all drunken joy evaporated from her face; she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and stared at Nick incredulously. And Nick was just frozen and shocked, because he couldn't believe he just did that for real.

"What the hell was that?" she demanded in a loud whisper.

"I don't know!" he whispered back.

"When Schmidt tried that, we made him put fifty bucks in the Douchebag Jar," Jess hissed. "I think you should put a hundred in there. No, two hundred."

"I'm sorry," he said wildly, running a hand through his hair, looking anywhere besides her accusatory eyes.

The carefree bubbliness of the past couple of hours that had lit up his features like a Christmas tree had given way now to his usual closed-off guardedness – and seeing him shut down like that, Jess almost felt bad for calling him out the way she did. Almost.

"I didn't think we were like that, Nick."

"We're not," he said. "It was an accident. I'm sorry. Won't happen again."

She said nothing, but the mood was dead and there was nothing left for them to do tonight except go to bed and sleep. She cleared away the wine and he pushed in the chairs and the two of them retreated to their respective corners, hearts buzzing like bees on caffeine.

xXx

The next evening, as Nick settled himself into his usual maelstrom of books and papers, he kept one eye out on Jess's door. She had been back to her usual self throughout the day, albeit a little warier around him, but only the night would tell whether he was forgiven or not.

Around four in the morning, her door finally opened and she walked into the kitchen.

Her hair and pajamas were rumpled like she had been trying to sleep but couldn't. She sat at the table across from him. He tried not to look too astonished or too pleased to see her there.

"You screwed up my sleeping pattern," she said solemnly. "I can't sleep at this time anymore."

"If it helps, neither can I," offered Nick.

She didn't smile.

"Look, we need to talk."

"I said I was sorry."

"I know." She took a deep breath. "I just…don't know what it meant."

"It meant I was drunk and stupid and wasn't thinking."

"Maybe." She chewed on her lip, stared at the ceiling.

They were quiet for a minute. Nick hardly dared to breathe.

Then—

"Cece told me one time that she thought you had a crush on me," said Jess. "I told her she was crazy. But now I just…need to know if she was right."

He went quiet again.

"I…don't know," he said carefully. "I mean, I like you and all, Jess. I do. I just don't know if I like you like that."

"But you might?"

It was too late in the night, too early in the morning, too important a conversation to lie or evade. "I don't know. Maybe."

"If I told you I liked you too, maybe even that way, what would you do?" Her voice was measured and light, but her eyes were deadly serious.

He swallowed thickly. "I don't know what I would do."

"That's your problem, Nick," she said. "You would never _do_ anything. You're a daydreamer. You would only ever say yes inside your own head."

"Are you saying you want me to say yes out loud? Do you want me to tell you I like you like that?"

"Only if it's true."

They went quiet again. Neither spoke for several minutes, though they held their gazes mostly steady.

Finally, Nick chose to break the silence.

"I like you, Jess. I just…we're really good friends. And roommates. I don't want to screw it up. I don't know if I'm even ready for that kind of thing yet."

"Honestly, Nick, with your defeatist attitude on relationships, I don't know if you're ever going to be ready," said Jess.

He couldn't deny that it hurt, hearing her say it so bluntly, so frankly, when normally she acted like a Disney princess come to life, singing and smiling and not being serious. But he knew she was telling the truth, which somehow made it both better and worse. Something closed off behind his eyes as words climbed up his throat.

"What about you? If I was ready, would you be ready?"

Jess chewed on her lower lip for a moment, considering it.

"I agree, Nick, we're good friends, and roommates. And if it went wrong, this place would become extremely awkward for both of us, which is something I don't want because we both love it here. And it would be really weird for a long time, to consider you my boyfriend. But…I think that if you told me you wanted to try, I would."

His eyebrows shot up, suddenly in danger of getting lost in his hairline. "Seriously? You would?"

Jess sighed heavily. "Yeah, I think I would, Nick. I like you, and you like me, and I mean, Cece and Schmidt still seem happy. Maybe we could be happy. But you'd have to promise me that you wouldn't run screaming at the first sign of commitment, because this is real for me. I want us to be friends no matter what."

He stared at her a long time, drinking in the delicacy of her chin, the gentle curve of her neck, the way her pale skin almost glowed in the dark, the way she was looking at him now, more intensely than she ever had, more intensely than he would ever have guessed she looked at anyone.

She felt more real here and now, somehow, than she had for a long time. She had feelings as fierce and as real as his; she cared just as much as he did; she wasn't cutesy, or flaky, or ditzy, or strange; she was Jess, who had a heart that could break, who cared about him, who understood that this could go wrong but was willing to try it anyway because that was what she did, that was who she was.

He chewed on his lower lip for a second, deciding. Then—

"I'm not ready for a relationship right now, Jess. But…I want to be. Soon."

She blinked twice, her expression unchanged. His heart skipped a beat.

"Okay," she said simply.

And then she got up and went back to bed.

xXx

Things went back to normal after that – at least, they seemed to. Jess was her usual quirky self the next morning, and Nick was his usual cranky self, and no one suspected anything different.

But Jess and Nick both knew that nothing was ever going to be the same again. They were just biding their time now, in the brief reprieve of the eye of the storm, until further notice.

xXx

The roommates all agreed that Nick's law school graduation party the following year was one of the best parties they had ever thrown – with the possible exception of Schmidt's party bus for his twenty-ninth.

They drank and partied and embarrassed the hell out of Nick for hours with pictures and stories and overly sentimental speeches. Schmidt arrived out of the blue with a karaoke machine, and they sang loudly and drunkenly until a few neighbors complained and forced them to stop.

It was one of the greatest nights in Nick's life. Even if he didn't remember most of it afterwards.

xXx

A few days after graduation, Nick got responses back from some of the job applications he had sent out. The best one of the lot wanted to interview him, but the interview – and the job – was back in Nick's hometown, Chicago. He would have to move if he wanted to take it.

The roommates were divided about this. Winston, Schmidt and Jess were all thrilled that Nick got the job he wanted, and kept telling him to stop being a moron and take it, but beneath that supportiveness was a deep aching sadness at the thought of Nick Miller finally moving out of the apartment and being on his own. Nick himself was ambivalent – some days desperate to take the job and be an adult, other days desperate to stay because that job wasn't worth leaving his best friends behind. There were others around here; he could make do with one of those. Couldn't he?

He mulled it over obsessively for a week, both with and without his roommates. But at the end of it, they all agreed it was in his best interest to go. He had spent so much time and money and energy getting that degree; it was about time he used it.

So he called the law firm in Chicago and said he was coming for the interview.

xXx

Two days after the interview, he got a call from the firm.

They wanted him to move out to Chicago within the next month. He'd gotten the job.

xXx

Packing was every bit as difficult as Nick had anticipated. Winston amused himself thoroughly with the bubble-wrap, and Schmidt got to work on a list of the best colognes and classiest cuff-links, and Jess kept trying to put stickers on the boxes, but they all knew they were going to miss Nick terribly. He kept snapping irritably that he would call all the time, and they could video-chat every week, but Nick felt the separation keenly. Moving to Chicago was going to be one of the hardest things he had ever done. He had never had to move away from Schmidt in all the thirty-plus years he had been alive. And he had always been too broke to live alone – but now he would, because the apartment he had chosen was a single. All his.

One night about a week before he had to move, Nick sat around at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch, staring moodily at the patterns in the wood that he had stared at all those nights he sat here, trying to stay afloat with his law school homework and talking to Jess. And at around midnight, Jess came out like she used to do, wearing her rumpled pajamas and her glasses and her signature smile.

"Hey," she said, sitting across from him in her favorite chair.

"Hey."

"You're nervous, aren't you." It wasn't a question, but a statement.

"Yeah. I am. Hence the scotch."

She smiled sadly. "It's going to be good for you, though."

"I know. But still."

She nodded. "I know."

He sighed and offered her the scotch. She shook her head and went to get a glass of water. Then she sat back down and fixed him with that wide-eyed stare of hers that seemed to send an arrow straight through his heart.

"I'm going to miss you. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. I'm going to miss you too, Jess."

She slipped off the hair elastic from her wrist and tied her hair back in a messy ponytail, obviously stalling. He watched with mild interest.

At last, she asked, "Do you remember when you told me that you weren't ready for a relationship yet?"

He nodded.

"Well…I got a job offer in Chicago too. Yesterday."

"Chicago's just the land of opportunity right now, isn't it?" He took another swig of scotch.

She took a sip of her water. "It seems so."

"Are you going to take the job?"

"I don't know. The pay is a little higher and the benefits are a little better. But the weather in Chicago really sucks."

He chuckled in spite of himself. "Yeah. It does. Nothing like California."

"So, I have two pretty big pro's to go to Chicago, and one pretty big con. And I was wondering…" Her cheeks went bright pink. "I guess I was just wondering what you would say if I told you I maybe wanted to take the job in Chicago."

He just stared at her.

"I like my job here," she said. "I do. But…I'm willing to move, if you're okay with it. If…if you're ready."

He simply couldn't stop staring at her. She blushed a deeper pink.

"Well…aren't you going to say something?"

He cleared his throat. "I was trying to calculate how much rent you'd have to pay if you moved into the apartment I'd picked."

As the words sunk in, her eyes lit up and her smile was brighter than sunlight, her teeth glowing in the semi-darkness of the kitchen.

"We can figure that out later," she said.

xXx

Two days before Nick was set to fly to Chicago, he and Jess broke the news to Schmidt and Winston. They were surprised, but also not surprised; hugs were exchanged and the four of them sat around the kitchen table, laying all their plans out and discussing.

It turned out that Winston had wanted to move in with Shelby in the next few weeks, and then start apartment hunting with her. He had been waiting to tell them until it was official, and Shelby had confirmed the previous night. Schmidt said he was tired of their faulty plumbing and creepy landlord too, and decided to move to an apartment closer to his office, maybe also closer to Cece. He said he would put the loft on the market as soon as Winston and Jess moved out.

Winston unearthed a bottle of champagne from somewhere, and so the four of them filled up their glasses and celebrated, toasting to the glorious idea of moving forward.

It was bittersweet – as they got steadily drunker, all four of them ended up in tears of varying intensity – but it felt like the right thing to do. It was the right thing for all of them.

xXx

Nick's flight was early in the morning; it was a long flight and he didn't want to have to explore a new city too late at night. Winston, Schmidt and Jess sent him off with too many care-packages and an embarrassing amount of hugs. He hated being sentimental, but he returned every single one of those hugs tightly. He didn't know how long it would be before he could do it again.

Just as Nick was sure they were gone and was about to get into the security line, Jess came running back. There was a certain look in her eye as she charged into him and nearly knocked him over; he realized she was going to kiss him a split second before she did.

It was their first real kiss – messy, awkward, and a little bit weird. But it filled him up and he held her there for as long as she would let him, kissing her and wondering why it had taken them so long to get to this point.

When she finally let go, all breathless and wild-eyed, she whispered in his ear, "See you soon."

xXx

She did see him soon, in just three weeks. Nick's apartment was not situated well at all with where Jess had to work, so they ended up having to move again. But this time, they chose the place together.

The first time they slept together was the first night they moved into their new apartment. It had been a long time coming, but it made them both happier than they had been in recent memory. He held her close, her head resting against his chest, and they watched the sun rise that morning, at peace with the world.

They spent many nights and many mornings like that in the weeks and months and years to come. Lying in bed together, all wrapped up in each other, watching the sunrise, almost disgustingly happy. They had their disagreements and arguments and insecurities, but those were reserved for other times of the day. Dawn was their special time, like it had been while Nick was in law school. Dawn was when they understood each other and the world the best.

Commitment-phobe that he was during all normal hours, dawn was the time when he felt the warmth of her weight by his side and always resolved to beat his cowardice. Under the glare of the fierce morning sun, he constantly rediscovered that being alone and safe was not worth being away from this. From her.

xXx

It wasn't until Nick Miller was thirty-six years old, slipping a shiny silver wedding ring on Jessica Day's finger, that he finally figured out what he'd never really understood while growing up: that merely wishing a girl would share her crayons with him would not make her do so; that it was fear and not impossibility that made him unable to see himself doing something worthwhile; that though women could hurt him, the right one could heal him and give him the faith he thought would forever elude him; and that being a fragile, neurotic daydreamer did not excuse him from doing the hard scary work that made dreams come true.

* * *

A/N: I'm super proud of this – if only because I wrote it out in the heat of the worst writer's block I've ever had, and because it's my first New Girl piece.

So, for that reason, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review telling me how you liked this.

Thanks!


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